MEDICINE HAT, Alta. — It’s a half hour before the start of the Medicine Hat Tigers game, and the parking lot at the arena is crammed full. Fans wearing bright orange jerseys, scarves and hats tumble in to cheer on the home team against the Prince George Cougars.

Before long, you can hear them yelling, “Ti-gers! Ti-gers! Ti-gers!”. The rink is whipped into a frenzy, as though struck by one of those madcap winds that tear through this southern Alberta town.

The local junior hockey team sells out almost every game. This is hockey town. Make no mistake.

It is also from this crucible of fan support that Trevor Linden found the wings to soar in the National Hockey League. As always, feelings are mixed here. There is a pride tinged with sadness over a favourite son who was gone too soon from the nest. His place in the famed Medicine Hat sun was fleeting.

Yet his name is stamped all over the place on a wall close to the dressing room listing the Tigers’ accomplishments — not the least of which is two consecutive Memorial Cups, in 1987 and 1988, in which Linden played key roles.

And his name is on the tip of Tigers’ tongues as they stamp into the dressing room, flush with the success of beating the Cougars.

Assistant captain Tyler Ennis emerges, sporting a cowboy hat and brimming with pride. He got the hat for being named one of the stars of the game. It seemed apt somehow.

“Trevor Linden? He’s a great player, one of the best to play the game,” said Ennis, who is from Edmonton. He recalled how Linden visited their dressing room when the Tigers played for the Memorial Cup in Vancouver two years ago. “He just seemed like a really nice, genuine guy and he gave us a lot of words of wisdom and helped us.”

“He is just a guy who goes and works hard every night,” said Tigers captain Brennan Bosch, who’s from Martensville, Sask. “No matter what kind of a player you are, that is something you can always take from Trevor.”

Associate coach Shaun Clouston is a former member of the Portland Winter Hawks, whose team lost to Medicine Hat in the Western Hockey League championship series in 1987. He still marvels at how Linden was only 16 at the time, yet was a big part of the Tigers’ success. “He is such an ambassador for the game.”

Medicine Hat native Trevor Ellerman, who played with Linden when they were both 16 and 17, said Linden was more committed to the game than most guys their age.

Linden was called up to play with the Tigers at the tail end of the 1985-86 season, when he was just 15, putting him on the ice with players two, three, even five years older than him.

“He didn’t look out of place at all,” said Ellerman. “In fact, he was ahead of some of the players.”

At 16, he joined the Tigers full-time. He played two full seasons — in 1986-87 and 1987-88, scoring 78 goals and amassing 180 points while winning two Memorial Cups. He was chosen second overall by the Vancouver Canucks in the 1988 NHL entry draft and, at 18, surprised many by sticking with the club after training camp.

Having the bar raised only made him better, said Ellerman. “Whatever the new level, he rose to it.”

Still, almost everyone thought Linden would be sent back to Medicine Hat for one more year at the junior level. That never happened. He scored 30 goals for the Canucks, tied for the team lead, and became the first Canuck rookie to be named team MVP.

“We were disappointed because we kind of felt if he would have come back here, there was a chance that we could get three Memorial Cups. No team has ever done that,” said local sportscaster Bob Ridley, who has done play-by-play broadcasts of all but one Tigers game since the team entered the league in 1970. “Guys like Trevor, you would like to watch forever.”

As Ridley reflects back on those days in the deserted Medicine Hat rink, a banner flutters high up in the rafters bearing the name of another Tigers progeny and NHL player, Lanny McDonald. Linden idolized him.

Ridley feels lucky to have watched a kid named Trevor blossom on ice.

He wasn’t always the fastest player, nor the top goal scorer. But in his heart, the team found its beat.

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Linden 'an ambassador for the game'

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